This article is about police road stops and searches on a highway without a search warrant.Several years ago it was in the news that a bank robber in Colorado had escaped and the
police were blocking off the interstate and stopping and searching vehicles with a road block.Even family vacationers were being stopped.Following the United States
Supreme Court case of Mapp vs Ohio, and other cases, to engage in a search of a vehicle, the police must have a search warrant based upon probable cause, or if there is not time, the police
can make a search if they can objectively prove that they had probable cause for a search at that time.

Now, the problem here is twofold.First, what gives the police a right to put up a road blocik and stop traffic, putting up a road block, with cars backed up for
miles?In this case there is no proable cause as to each vehicle, especially not in relation to a vacationing family and their station wagon.

Moreover, the police do not have probabke cause to search vacation vehicles, nor do they have a search warrant as to any particular vehicle.In the Colorado case the police
forced vacationers to get out their suitcases and cooler chests, and apparently had the driver dump out the contents of each on the side of the road.The police were clearly in the
wrong in this case on both counts, and should be liable to the vacationers under 42 U.S.C. section 1983.This is America not Nazi Germany.